“I had the distinct feeling you were going to need blood—lots of it. You need to feed frequently so you’ll be at full strength for whatever is coming.”
He hadn’t spoken much since we came back upstairs. He just crawled back into bed and pulled me into his arms, stroking his hand over my hair as we lay together in the darkness.
I was too keyed up mentally to try to sleep, with a million different scenarios and questions dancing around unanswered in my head. But he was hung up on one particular issue and that was the blood.
I could feel the war waging inside of him. The demon part he’d been denying was rejoicing over the idea of resuming the drinking. But Vance, the real Vance, who’s soul had struggled so hard to try and beat this—he had doubts. He longed to be just himself, to love me without having to worry about strange repercussions from his actions. He wanted to be normal—at least as normal as he could be.
Frankly, I thought it was a true testament to his character he could still separate the two halves of himself enough to think rationally. He was purposely trying to make decisions based on the desires of his heart and not out of raging bloodlust.
He
was still in control, most of the time, a feat which few, if any, demons had ever accomplished. I certainly knew that none of his demonic family could say the same. They were evil to the core, despite their cultured sophistication.
“We need to find another blood source,” he stated calmly with a sigh. “I can’t keep weakening you. If there’s a need for me to be strong, there’s a need for you to be strong as well. I need to keep feeding from you down to a minimum.”
I snuggled in closer to him and didn’t reply. I was greedy. I didn’t want him to feed off anyone else. The feeding connection between us was bonding and sensual, even if it was wrong. I didn’t want him sharing that with a different person.
He sighed. “I was thinking more along the lines of blood donations, if we could work that out. I don’t want to drink from anyone else either, baby.”
“This is going to mess up all your hard work and drive the bloodlust back up again.” I pouted against his shirt as I nuzzled his chest.
“I know, and I’m sorry. But think of it this way, we know I can control it now, to an extent. Hopefully when this is all over I can work to push it back again, and we can have some semblance of a normal life—normal for us, at least.”
“Okay,” I said, knowing there was nothing I could do to change the situation. “So when do you want to leave?”
“I think we should put that off for right now. If Damien has the place that warded and protected, we need to formulate a good plan of how we would get in and out exactly. We need to get hold of a blueprint to the property and see if Shelly could mark out the details from her vision. If she can’t, then we need to think of another plan. Also, we need to see what your grandma and Hex can come up with regarding the necromancy aspect.”
“So you don’t think we should go now?”
“Oh, we’ll go. I just want to be better prepared for when we do. No sense rushing in like two fools and ending up trapped ourselves.”
I laughed slightly. “I think that’s the first time in a long time I’ve heard you sit back and advocate a planning session. You are usually the person wanting to jump right in with guns blazing.”
He lifted my chin to look into my eyes. “I’ll probably get that way again, once I resume the drinking. It fires the bloodlust in me, raises the rage, you know?”
I nodded. “I know.”
“So you’ll have to help keep me level headed, okay?”
“Because I’ve done such a good job at that in the past,” I grumbled.
“Hey” he said, giving me a nudge. “You’re the only reason I’m even sane right now … because you never stopped believing in me. You have no idea how much you help me out. Don’t give up on me.”
“I’ll never give up on you. Not even after my last breath has left my body.”
He rolled me over onto my back so he could lean over me.
“Kiss me,” I said as I stared into his eyes.
“Your wish is my command.” He grinned softly, the shadows of sadness reflecting in his eyes over what he needed to do.
“Hey! I’m the jinni,” I teased, trying to help lighten the moment. “That’s my line.”
“You don’t need it,” he replied. “You grant my wishes every day.”
Tears welled up in my eyes, and I found myself choked up and unable to reply. I loved him with all my heart, with every fiber in my soul. No matter where his path led, I was determined to make the best of the situation, to help him in any way I could. Yes, he had his issues, so did I, but his soul was pure inside, like the brilliant fire of a diamond. He was my treasure.
He lifted his hand and stroked down the side of my face in a loving gesture, his eyes full of warmth at the feelings radiating from me.
“I love you too, Portia. Thank you.” His lips descended to mine, and he did indeed kiss me breathless for several hours, seeming desperate to prove his love to me with his actions. When the sun was beginning to peak over the horizon he finally bit into me, feeding heavily, until I sank into oblivion once again.
We spent the next week drawing out things from Shelly’s vision, trying to formulate some plan of attack and where the best access points to Damien’s property were. Though we tried to keep things between the four of us, the others quickly noticed our quiet whispering together all the time.
Krista was the one who finally approached us and asked to know what was happening. Vance filled her in on the details and she encouraged us to let the rest of the group know.
I was surprised to find most of them agreed with us and felt it was time for some action too. My mom was the only one who seemed really hesitant, and under the current circumstances I could hardly blame her. She was already resigning herself to the fact my dad was a lost cause, and she didn’t want her daughter placed back in the line of fire.
I didn’t care about the danger personally. I was ready for all of this to be done and over with. Honestly, the thought of a surprise attack excited me, and I hoped it would put an end to all of this mayhem.
“How do you think we can contain Damien?” Shelly asked at our late night brain storming session. “If we can’t kill him because of the Awakening, we need to find a way to keep him captive. He’s really powerful though.”
“I’ve thought a lot about that. I’m not sure a containment system like you used to hold me will work for him,” Vance replied. “He had Portia in something similar and was able to walk through the barrier at will.”
“We should drug him,” I spoke up. “That’s what he did to me. He can’t work his magic if he’s not conscious.”
“That would be my first choice too,” Grandma said. “The only problem we run into there is we would need to make sure he was kept drugged on a precise schedule. One late dose and everything could fall apart.”
“I say drug him and remove the Awakening from him,” Hex added, and all eyes turned to him. “I know I can gain access to the Hoodoo ritual that was used on Vance and Portia, and I have no problem marking this guy for death.”
Shivers ran over my skin as I remembered what I’d gone through when Mayla and Catriona removed the Awakening from me. It seemed so uncaring and blasé to have us all sitting around the dinner table talking about a subject so casually. I had to remind myself this was Damien we were discussing, and the world would be a much better place without him. No one ever spoke of it out loud, but we all knew we were planning someone else’s demise. Evil or not, it was a distasteful thing to be doing, and it made me even more angry at Damien for placing us in this kind of situation.
My personal focus though, was to try to rescue my dad and see if there was any way he could live a semi-normal life again. I knew the others seemed to think there was no hope for him, and he wouldn’t want to be rescued in his current state. They were convinced Damien had probably driven him mad, but I wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t going to give up on him until I saw with my own eyes that he was beyond saving.
Another week passed by while we gathered supplies and ingredients we needed for the potion to sedate Damien and remove the Awakening. During this time my mom also aided in getting supplies for blood donations so we could start building up a supply of fresh witch blood for Vance, if he wasn’t able to readily drink from me.
It was a sparse choice of candidates for Vance with the only magical people besides me being Earl, Grandma, and Hex. He needed to consume twice the amount of Earl’s blood to get any kind of fix, because Earl’s magic was so diluted. Hex was not at all thrilled over donating his, but managed to do so without grumbling too bad. Grandma was happy to comply, but it still wasn’t enough.
Thankfully, the other coven members from Sedona arrived to help out in our planned attack, adding their blood to the mix also. While I knew Vance wasn’t thrilled about drinking their blood, I also noticed it seemed to lift a weight off him. I was still worried about everything though.
“I’ve got it under control,” he whispered to me, hearing my thoughts. “You don’t have to worry about me acquiring a taste for the others. They’ll be downright bland compared to you.”
“We can’t take blood from them often. They don’t have the healing capabilities we do. You’re going to still need to drink from me regularly.”
“I know, but at least there’s some back up now. That makes me feel a lot better. If worse comes to worse I can always go out hunting.”
“I like that idea even less.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you do, but I’ll be doing whatever it takes to protect you. If that means someone else is lunch … then so be it.”
In the end all of our planning was for naught, however, when Shelly had another vision that sent us in a new direction. It appeared Damien was on the move again and this time he was headed toward Massachusetts—Salem ironically—to a small shop a local witch owned called Bell’s Book and Candle, which I found to be a delightful play on the old James Stewart movie from the 1950’s I used to watch with my mom. Vance proceeded to inform me that the term originally had to do with religious excommunication. A bell was rung to symbolize death, a holy book closed to show breaking from the church, and a candle’s flame extinguished to signify the removal of one’s soul from the sight of God. After that I didn’t find the saying to be quite so charming anymore.
We decided as a group that Vance and I would go to Salem to try to get the key Damien was looking for, while the rest would travel to Arkansas to observe the mansion and see if they might be able to orchestrate an attack while Damien was away. I thought it sounded like an excellent idea, and I was fairly certain Vance and I would have no problem creating a diversion for them if they needed more time. If Damien knew we were in Salem, he would be on us instantly.
Vance insisted on flying to Massachusetts, not even taking a moment to consider attempting to use my jinn powers. He said I needed to be at full strength, and I agreed with him since I had never attempted a jump at so great a distance before. We went on the plane hoping we wouldn’t be too late, but our nerves almost made the flight seem unbearable.
Before long we found ourselves standing in the quaint New England seaside village on Essex Street, as we gazed down the row of brick lined shops in the Pedestrian Mall. It was quite the visual treat since everything was decorated for Halloween, or Samhain, as many of the locals called it, which was tomorrow. Everything was decorated to lure the visiting tourists who were here for the occasion.
We found Bell’s Book and Candle easily in a little shop at the end of the row, but when we tried to go inside we found the door was locked.
“What should we do now?” I asked Vance as I leaned up against one of the windows for a look inside the store.
“I don’t know. The sign says they close at six. It’s a few minutes after. We must’ve just missed it.”
“Let’s try knocking and see if someone will come answer,” I suggested.
He rapped on the door loudly while I continued to look through the window, but no one responded the sound.
“Shall we check around back? See if there’s a car parked somewhere?”
“It can’t hurt,” he said, reaching over to grab my hand.
We made our way around the building but didn’t see any vehicles anywhere.
“This is where I wish Shelly’s visions were a little more descriptive. If we knew what we were looking for, we could just break in and get it,” Vance complained. “Now we’re going to need to find a hotel room for the night.”
“I think that’s probably going to be the best plan. Beside Shelly made a point to tell us we were to talk to the proprietor, so there must be something she is supposed to be able to tell us.”
“Yeah. Well, it opens again at eight so we will come back in the morning. Let’s go find a hotel. Hopefully something will still have vacancy with all the tourists that are here.”
We made our way back to the rental car we had picked up by Logan International Airport and headed toward the ocean. We didn’t have any luck at the first couple of places we stopped at but finally caught a break at the Salem Waterfront Hotel, which had just received a late cancellation. We paid for the room for two nights, just in case there were any problems with talking to the owner of Bell’s Book and Candle tomorrow.
Vance thought it best to stay holed up in our room in case Damien was wandering around somewhere with the same problem we were having, so we ended up ordering room service for dinner and calling it an early night.
I could tell we were in luck the next morning as we walked toward the little shop because several display items were out on the sidewalk in front of it. Vance squeezed my hand before he reached for the door and ushered me inside, and I didn’t miss his glance behind us as he surveyed the mall for anyone else who might be watching us.
“Be right with you,” a voice from the back called out as the bell on the door jingled.